Whether or not you seek medical attention and whether or not you receive it is entirely between you and the other party willing to administer it.
Only if you are paying 100% for it. .Do you think you are?

If you are not, therein lies the source of the problem.

If you lead an obese unhealthy lifestyle, then it should be reflected in the type of health coverage you can afford.
Hiding costs with single payer options, multiple levels of government lobbied regulation etc is the real cause of poor lifestyle choices.

No it isn’t. Poor lifestyle choices are caused 100% by the people making those choices. Unfortunately other people are paying for a big chunk of the expense related to those choices.

Again fix that problem, by redirecting responsibility back to its origin.

That’s a point. Maybe people who drink Big Gulps and those who refuse to exercise should pay higher insurance premiums. Drinking wine moderately, however, has been shown to improve health, so maybe moderate wine drinkers should get a discount. Smokers already pay more, though not nearly enough to cover their increased health care costs.

Again, these are all voluntary solutions. (Though health insurance providers are far from market driven).

The pont is that your health impacts the broader community. You can’t get away from that. If you are bent on slowly killing yourself you shouldn’t expect your neighbors to pay for the consequences.

No disagreement here. Conversely, you should not expect your choices to be criminalized because others make poor choices with their own lives.

You cannot force someone to adopt your health standards simply to increase *your own* perceived access to medical resources against both their and their medical practitioner’s will.
That’s just immoral.

No, it’s community health and there is nothing immoral about it. Your bad health habits impact the whole community—that’s what’s immoral. If you don’t like community-based health care, find a doctor who will treat you independently and pay the full cost of care 100% out of your own pocket, including the use of a hospital, nursing, drugs and emergency and ambulance service. Then you can go ahead and kill yourself and nobody will object. Otherwise you are asking other people to pay for the consquences of your indulgences.

Youre not talking about community health, youre talking about losing ownership of your own body.
If you did pay 100% of your health insurance premiums, there would probably be no discussion.
However, it seems you are proposing that the problems caused by centralized state planning of personal health services, should be centralized state planning of personal health choices.

Sorry, I just had to pipe in.
This type of justification for intrusion is completely infuriating and often promoted in today’s society.

-Rob

Agreed. this is a slippery slope. We could use the same logic to outlaw sky diving, mountain climbing, bike riding, or for that matter, getting out of bed. To use this logic only when the behavior is one that we find unacceptable is dishonest since we don’t use it to outlaw behavior which is just as risky but more socially accepted.

rbairos - 01 April 2013 11:11 AM

Whether or not you seek medical attention and whether or not you receive it is entirely between you and the other party willing to administer it.
If you lead an obese unhealthy lifestyle, then it should be reflected in the type of health coverage you can afford.Hiding costs with single payer options, multiple levels of government lobbied regulation etc is the real cause of poor lifestyle choices.

-Rob

I don’t understand your logic here. Single payer options do not hide costs anymore than the current system. It does not matter who is the insurer is ( government or private). What matters is where you put the incentives. Any system regardless of how it is financed can be designed to have incentives to promote better health habits. If this is simply an attack on universal health care because it does not fit your political views I would suggest you do some research beyond the silliness seen on fox news ( I would be happy to provide you with links if you need them). Most countries with single payer systems are doing far better than us on most health measures and at half the cost.

Signature

For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious,.... and just plain wrong

If you sicken and need medical care you are using valuable resources that could go to someone who has not deliberately ruined his own health.

Since I am responsible for providing for my own health care, this is likewise none of your damned business.

Thats exactly my point. No one is prohibiting you from drinking 32 oz of soda if you want they are just making it slightly more difficult to mindlessly order that amount so your analogy to the war on drugs does not apply here.

Which aside from being very MUCH an intrusion on my personal freedom, it’s also symbolism over substance. The very sort of waste of time and resources which actually breeds contempt for the law and not respect.

Regarding my analogy about the War On Drugs, it’s entirely apt and for reasons those here inclined towards statism will never understand: The market decided. The war on drugs failed precisely because there was and still is an overwhelming demand for the product and people were and still are willing to pay through the nose to get it.

The market decided, not the micromanager in the legislature. Whether you like it or not, it will continue to decide. No amount of social manipulation will ever change that.

Signature

Question authority and think for yourself. Big Brother does not know best and never has.

Regarding my analogy about the War On Drugs, it’s entirely apt and for reasons those here inclined towards statism will never understand: The market decided. The war on drugs failed precisely because there was and still is an overwhelming demand for the product and people were and still are willing to pay through the nose to get it.

The market decided, not the micromanager in the legislature. Whether you like it or not, it will continue to decide. No amount of social manipulation will ever change that.

I agree that the market is what makes the war on drugs a failure. We were never arguing about that. What you don’t seem to be getting is that the same model does not apply here because no one really cares about their 32oz soda as much as they say and as a result market forces will make this restriction very successful. Demand will drop and consumption will decrease because the cost in time or inconvenience will have increased and for some non-zero percentage of the population the cost of having their 32oz of coke will just not be worth it.

I get it. You hate government but your devotion to a libertarian philosophy blinds you to alternative approaches to problems.

Signature

For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious,.... and just plain wrong

Demand will drop and consumption will decrease because the cost in time or inconvenience will have increased and for some non-zero percentage of the population the cost of having their 32oz of coke will just not be worth it.

No.

The people will just work a way around it if it’s all that important to them. If it’s not, they just move on to something else.

The market in the end still rules.

I get it. You hate government but your devotion to a libertarian philosophy blinds you to alternative approaches to problems.

No.

You don’t get it. I don’t hate government. I mistrust government because all too often, it presumes to have a special wisdom which it never has had and never will.

I do however despise social manipulators who stick their nose into my personal affairs, who presume that they have a special wisdom which gives them some sort of right to do so, and who think that nanny state is the answer when all too often, the nanny state is THE grotesquely incompetent problem.

Signature

Question authority and think for yourself. Big Brother does not know best and never has.

I don’t understand your logic here. Single payer options do not hide costs anymore than the current system. It does not matter who is the insurer is ( government or private). What matters is where you put the incentives. Any system regardless of how it is financed can be designed to have incentives to promote better health habits.

Wrong. Governments don’t provide incentives by definition. They redistribute resources created by others and criminalize actions on whim (soda pop ban being the last ridiculous effort).
Even if you can define that behaviour as incentivizing, it is at best a horribly inefficient and skewed system of operation if medicare, the post office, the DMV, pension plans, department of education, or any other governmental institution that comes to mind is examined.

If this is simply an attack on universal health care because it does not fit your political views I would suggest you do some research beyond the silliness seen on fox news ( I would be happy to provide you with links if you need them). Most countries with single payer systems are doing far better than us on most health measures and at half the cost.

Thanks for the insight. However, I am Canadian, from a large family. Some residing in the States, and some residing here in Canada.
My father in law was on a 14 month waiting list for a shoulder replacement when he was in excruciating pain requiring morphine.
My wife and I had wait times of 12 to 14 hours in Ottawa to first see an attending physician when it was finally determined she needed immediate emergency surgery.
My coworker spent 5 hours strapped to a gurney in a hallway, jaundice and vomiting before an attending physician could finally see him and confirm it was stones requiring pain medication.
Good luck getting a knee replacement in a reasonable time.

And before you state ‘at least your family got help without bankrupting themselves’ keep in mind the US isn’t any more market driven.
Its a large government-lobbied system of tangled corporate health providers that make it legally impossible to provide market driven choices.
Canada and the US rank somewhat closely (both in the 30’s overall if I recall) based on the last W.h.o report.
I don’t know of any other western democracies besides Canada that ban private insurance for core services.

At least with its sliver of market driven competition the US is a magnet for canadian medical tourism, for those with the means.
However, bring up the topic of spending your own cash to alleviate/cure yourself or your loved ones outside the government framework and you might as well be flinging feces on the flag and eating babies for breakfast.
We’re that brainwashed as a society to see private involvement in health care as evil.

But hey, thanks for the tips about how rosy things are outside the US.

Governments provide incentives all the time. A few years ago the U.S. government gave people several thousand dollars to trade in gas guzzling vehicles for more fuel efficient vehicles. When my wife and I upgraded our HVAC system 18 months ago and added insulation to our house we got a nice tax rebate the following year. Austin, Texas, has been paying people to remove thirsty St. Augustine grass from their yards and replace it with native drought-tolerant grasses. Those are all examples of incentives.

Governments provide incentives all the time. A few years ago the U.S. government gave people several thousand dollars to trade in gas guzzling vehicles for more fuel efficient vehicles. When my wife and I upgraded our HVAC system 18 months ago and added insulation to our house we got a nice tax rebate the following year. Austin, Texas, has been paying people to remove thirsty St. Augustine grass from their yards and replace it with native drought-tolerant grasses. Those are all examples of incentives.

Again, those all fit exactly into my previous criticism of government ‘incentives’. (ie, redistribution of tax dollars and criminalizing alternatives).
And they all involve highly monopolized government services (transportation, energy, water utilities) to boot.

I don’t understand your logic here. Single payer options do not hide costs anymore than the current system. It does not matter who is the insurer is ( government or private). What matters is where you put the incentives. Any system regardless of how it is financed can be designed to have incentives to promote better health habits.

Wrong. Governments don’t provide incentives by definition. They redistribute resources created by others and criminalize actions on whim (soda pop ban being the last ridiculous effort).
Even if you can define that behaviour as incentivizing, it is at best a horribly inefficient and skewed system of operation if medicare, the post office, the DMV, pension plans, department of education, or any other governmental institution that comes to mind is examined.

Where do you come up with that? In what dictionary does it say that incentives are non-governmental tools? Governments do use incentivization. The term incentive is defined as “something that incites or has a tendency to incite to determination or action”. You can call it something else because the word doesn’t fit your political views but that doesn’t change what it is. You should really do a bit more research on these issue before you make claims that are apparently based entirely on personal experience. Medicare is by far the most efficient health insurance plan we have in the U.S.. Its administrative costs as a percentage of total expenditures are in the low single digits while the private insurance industries own supporters admit their administrative costs are about 17% of expenditures. In addition medicare costs have risen at a slower rate than private insurance. As a physician who has worked in both systems for more than 23 years I can also tell you that all of this has happened despite that fact that medicare restricts care far less than most current private insurers do. When i need to send a medicare patient for a CT scan I just order it and it gets done. If I need to send a patient with private insurance for the same scan I have to waste valuable time convincing some high school drop out at the insurance company that I know more than he does about medicine and that the patient does indeed need a CT scan.

rbairos - 02 April 2013 08:28 AM

macgyver - 01 April 2013 02:12 PM

If this is simply an attack on universal health care because it does not fit your political views I would suggest you do some research beyond the silliness seen on fox news ( I would be happy to provide you with links if you need them). Most countries with single payer systems are doing far better than us on most health measures and at half the cost.

Thanks for the insight. However, I am Canadian, from a large family. Some residing in the States, and some residing here in Canada.
My father in law was on a 14 month waiting list for a shoulder replacement when he was in excruciating pain requiring morphine.
My wife and I had wait times of 12 to 14 hours in Ottawa to first see an attending physician when it was finally determined she needed immediate emergency surgery.
My coworker spent 5 hours strapped to a gurney in a hallway, jaundice and vomiting before an attending physician could finally see him and confirm it was stones requiring pain medication.
Good luck getting a knee replacement in a reasonable time.

And before you state ‘at least your family got help without bankrupting themselves’ keep in mind the US isn’t any more market driven.
Its a large government-lobbied system of tangled corporate health providers that make it legally impossible to provide market driven choices.
Canada and the US rank somewhat closely (both in the 30’s overall if I recall) based on the last W.h.o report.
I don’t know of any other western democracies besides Canada that ban private insurance for core services.

At least with its sliver of market driven competition the US is a magnet for canadian medical tourism, for those with the means.
However, bring up the topic of spending your own cash to alleviate/cure yourself or your loved ones outside the government framework and you might as well be flinging feces on the flag and eating babies for breakfast.
We’re that brainwashed as a society to see private involvement in health care as evil.

But hey, thanks for the tips about how rosy things are outside the US.

Cheers,
Rob.

These sorts of personal anecdotes are the type of misdirection that people often use as a reason to dispute the benefits of universal health care but they are misleading and miss the big picture. I can provide you with many examples of Americans who not only had care delayed but never got care at all because they did not have the insurance nor the personal finances to cover it. Anecdotes are meaningless unless you are a politician or a TV pundit trying to manipulate your audience. The numbers are what you need to look at. The U.S. is currently the number one per capita spender on health care in the entire world at $8,300 per person. The number two country is Norway and they spend only $5,300 yet we are ranked 37th in overall quality of care by the latest WHO rankings. Canada was 30th, seven places higher than us and spent only half of what we did. I sympathize with your friends and family who had to wait for care that they felt they needed but at least they got it. Millions of Americans have no access to care at all despite the huge sum we spend on health care.

If you want to discuss this issue intelligently you need to do your homework. Come here with facts not ideology

Signature

For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious,.... and just plain wrong

“Where do you come up with that? In what dictionary does it say that incentives are non-governmental tools?”

None that I know of. Perhaps you should re-read my criticism of government incentives more carefully, in which I make the point that use of government to incentivize is highly problematic and inefficient, if not morally dubious.

“Governments do use incentivization. The term incentive is defined as “something that incites or has a tendency to incite to determination or action”. You can call it something else because the word doesn’t fit your political views but that doesn’t change what it is.”

Again, perhaps you should re-read more carefully?

“You should really do a bit more research on these issue before you make claims that are apparently based entirely on personal experience.”

Im contradicting the perceived notion among US democrats that universal health care is some magical panacea, just as you keep inferring that if something’s reported
as true in Fox News, it must be false. At least my experiences involve everyone directly around me.
One more recent example. My brother was just diagnosed with a hernia yesterday. He was told he could see ‘Dr Chen in a few weeks’, or try a private walk in clinic
(Shouldice) for more immediate results. (The Shouldice clinic is a highly respected hernia center where I live, that has generated much controversy when used by
politicians in the past for its private associations)

“Medicare is by far the most efficient health insurance plan we have in the U.S. Its administrative costs as a percentage of total expenditures are in the low single digits while the private insurance industries own supporters admit their administrative costs are about 17% of expenditures. In addition medicare costs have risen at a slower rate than private insurance. “

Super. Care to explain why administrative costs are so high in the ‘private’ insurance industry?
Care to explain why Medicare financial model is spiralling into insolvency?
Care to explain why the rate of Danes, Swedes, Brits etc switching to private insurance is growing dramatically?
Care to explain why there is a growing medical tourism industry, even in places with universal health care such as where I live?

“As a physician who has worked in both systems for more than 23 years I can also tell you that all of this has happened despite that fact that medicare restricts care far less than most current private insurers do. “

And they are experiencing dire financial problems as admitted by both Democrats + Republicans.
Using other people’s resources to fund your operation with a mandated customer base isn’t exactly hard to do for a specific length of time.
If you believe your experience as a doctor is not anecdotal, unlike my experience as a patient, then explain why there is a growing number of doctors speaking out against the legal regulatory burden imposed by insurance providers?

“When i need to send a medicare patient for a CT scan I just order it and it gets done. If I need to send a patient with private insurance for the same scan I have to waste valuable time convincing some high school drop out at the insurance company that I know more than he does about medicine and that the patient does indeed need a CT scan.

Why do you think universal health care won’t scrutinize requests either?
Both are dealing with a limited resource. You’re trading immediacy with rationing as I’ve noted with several examples from my immediate family.
And for the record, your ideologic argument against for profit organizations would also apply to the production of other essential items such as food no?

“These sorts of personal anecdotes are the type of misdirection that people often use as a reason to dispute the benefits of universal health care but they are misleading and miss the big picture.”

Perhaps I should go online and rail against ‘Faux News’ and ignore underlying cost pressures inherent in the current health insurance regulatory scheme.
Why do you fail to look at the self-imposed legal regulatory burden currently imposed by private US health insurance interests?
If anyone’s not presenting a complete picture..

“I can provide you with many examples of Americans who not only had care delayed but never got care at all because they did not have the insurance nor the personal finances to cover it.”

But sadly I predict you will completely fail to analyse the governmental role in those costs and smugly declare them as ‘for profit’.

“Anecdotes are meaningless unless you are a politician or a TV pundit trying to manipulate your audience. The numbers are what you need to look at. The U.S. is currently the number one per capita spender on health care in the entire world at $8,300 per person. The number two country is Norway and they spend only $5,300 yet we are ranked 37th in overall quality of care by the latest WHO rankings. Canada was 30th, seven places higher than us and spent only half of what we did. “

Why not compare number of pirates to global warming?
Or in other words, Canada which has had universal health care for decades ranks *only* 7 points above the US, which are both outranked by 30 countries which provide both public and private health insurance options.

“I sympathize with your friends and family who had to wait for care that they felt they needed but at least they got it. Millions of Americans have no access to care at all despite the huge sum we spend on health care.”

Again, if you believe your health care is market driven, you need to back up that astonishing claim.

“If you want to discuss this issue intelligently you need to do your homework. Come here with facts not ideology.”

My “ideology” is that someone has an inherent right to decide for themselves where and how to spend their resources in order that they or their loved ones can receive the best medical attention they can find. My “ideology” is to look at underlying causes that restrict choice and increase costs through involuntary regulatory burden.

“Anecdotes are meaningless unless you are a politician or a TV pundit trying to manipulate your audience. The numbers are what you need to look at. The U.S. is currently the number one per capita spender on health care in the entire world at $8,300 per person. The number two country is Norway and they spend only $5,300 yet we are ranked 37th in overall quality of care by the latest WHO rankings. Canada was 30th, seven places higher than us and spent only half of what we did. “

Why not compare number of pirates to global warming?
Or in other words, Canada which has had universal health care for decades ranks *only* 7 points above the US, which are both outranked by 30 countries which provide both public and private health insurance options.

Sorry. I am having an extremely difficult time trying to finding any coherency in you responses. This is one of the best. “why not compare the number of prates to global warming” Seriously? Are you really having a hard time following the logic here. The U.S. spends TWICE as much as Canada on health care and ranks seven places below it.

I could rip the entirety of your post point by point but its getting too tiring. All I will get in return is a bunch of vague comments that dont respond to my actual points.

I think its clear we are not going to agree on this. We have dramatically different views of economics, freedom and social responsibility and since you don’t seem to be able to adhere to any sort of logical point/counterpoint I’ll cut my losses here.

Signature

For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious,.... and just plain wrong

Governments provide incentives all the time. A few years ago the U.S. government gave people several thousand dollars to trade in gas guzzling vehicles for more fuel efficient vehicles. When my wife and I upgraded our HVAC system 18 months ago and added insulation to our house we got a nice tax rebate the following year. Austin, Texas, has been paying people to remove thirsty St. Augustine grass from their yards and replace it with native drought-tolerant grasses. Those are all examples of incentives.

Again, those all fit exactly into my previous criticism of government ‘incentives’. (ie, redistribution of tax dollars and criminalizing alternatives).
And they all involve highly monopolized government services (transportation, energy, water utilities) to boot.

If you are going to redefine the word “incentive” to match your political and philosophical ideology then you’ll have a hard time communicating with me. Libertarians like to play semantics with words to avoid discussing the obvious: you are just as dependent upon redistribution of tax dollars as everyone else in our society.

Further, none of those incentives fit into your ideological viewpoint of government criminalizing alternatives. Other government incentives include providing flood insurance to people and businesses who build in flood plains. This also does not fit into your box of government criminalizing alternatives.

Signature

You cannot have a rational conversation with someone who holds irrational beliefs.

Whether or not you seek medical attention and whether or not you receive it is entirely between you and the other party willing to administer it.
Only if you are paying 100% for it. .Do you think you are?

If you are not, therein lies the source of the problem.

If you lead an obese unhealthy lifestyle, then it should be reflected in the type of health coverage you can afford.
Hiding costs with single payer options, multiple levels of government lobbied regulation etc is the real cause of poor lifestyle choices.

No it isn’t. Poor lifestyle choices are caused 100% by the people making those choices. Unfortunately other people are paying for a big chunk of the expense related to those choices.

Again fix that problem, by redirecting responsibility back to its origin.

That’s a point. Maybe people who drink Big Gulps and those who refuse to exercise should pay higher insurance premiums. Drinking wine moderately, however, has been shown to improve health, so maybe moderate wine drinkers should get a discount. Smokers already pay more, though not nearly enough to cover their increased health care costs.

Again, these are all voluntary solutions. (Though health insurance providers are far from market driven).

The pont is that your health impacts the broader community. You can’t get away from that. If you are bent on slowly killing yourself you shouldn’t expect your neighbors to pay for the consequences.

No disagreement here. Conversely, you should not expect your choices to be criminalized because others make poor choices with their own lives.

Nobody has suggested that the choices be criminalized. The suggestion was that nobody offer 62-ounce drinks for sale. I don’t remember anyone suggesting there should be any criminal consequences for that.

You cannot force someone to adopt your health standards simply to increase *your own* perceived access to medical resources against both their and their medical practitioner’s will.
That’s just immoral.

No, it’s community health and there is nothing immoral about it. Your bad health habits impact the whole community—that’s what’s immoral. If you don’t like community-based health care, find a doctor who will treat you independently and pay the full cost of care 100% out of your own pocket, including the use of a hospital, nursing, drugs and emergency and ambulance service. Then you can go ahead and kill yourself and nobody will object. Otherwise you are asking other people to pay for the consquences of your indulgences.

Youre not talking about community health, youre talking about losing ownership of your own body.
If you did pay 100% of your health insurance premiums, there would probably be no discussion.
However, it seems you are proposing that the problems caused by centralized state planning of personal health services, should be centralized state planning of personal health choices.

Does that sound about right to you?

There is nothing immoral about a democratic government making laws to protect people from excesses. They do it every day. There are laws about speed limits and reckless driving. Do you see that as “centralized state planning of personal choices”? How about FDA and department of agriculture laws. Do you see those as “centralized state planning of personal health choices” too?

Whether or not you seek medical attention and whether or not you receive it is entirely between you and the other party willing to administer it.
Only if you are paying 100% for it. .Do you think you are?

If you are not, therein lies the source of the problem.

If you lead an obese unhealthy lifestyle, then it should be reflected in the type of health coverage you can afford.
Hiding costs with single payer options, multiple levels of government lobbied regulation etc is the real cause of poor lifestyle choices.

No it isn’t. Poor lifestyle choices are caused 100% by the people making those choices. Unfortunately other people are paying for a big chunk of the expense related to those choices.

Again fix that problem, by redirecting responsibility back to its origin.

That’s a point. Maybe people who drink Big Gulps and those who refuse to exercise should pay higher insurance premiums. Drinking wine moderately, however, has been shown to improve health, so maybe moderate wine drinkers should get a discount. Smokers already pay more, though not nearly enough to cover their increased health care costs.

Again, these are all voluntary solutions. (Though health insurance providers are far from market driven).

The pont is that your health impacts the broader community. You can’t get away from that. If you are bent on slowly killing yourself you shouldn’t expect your neighbors to pay for the consequences.

No disagreement here. Conversely, you should not expect your choices to be criminalized because others make poor choices with their own lives.

Nobody has suggested that the choices be criminalized. The suggestion was that nobody offer 62-ounce drinks for sale. I don’t remember anyone suggesting there should be any criminal consequences for that.

You cannot force someone to adopt your health standards simply to increase *your own* perceived access to medical resources against both their and their medical practitioner’s will.
That’s just immoral.

No, it’s community health and there is nothing immoral about it. Your bad health habits impact the whole community—that’s what’s immoral. If you don’t like community-based health care, find a doctor who will treat you independently and pay the full cost of care 100% out of your own pocket, including the use of a hospital, nursing, drugs and emergency and ambulance service. Then you can go ahead and kill yourself and nobody will object. Otherwise you are asking other people to pay for the consquences of your indulgences.

Youre not talking about community health, youre talking about losing ownership of your own body.
If you did pay 100% of your health insurance premiums, there would probably be no discussion.
However, it seems you are proposing that the problems caused by centralized state planning of personal health services, should be centralized state planning of personal health choices.

Does that sound about right to you?

There is nothing immoral about a democratic government making laws to protect people from excesses. They do it every day. There are laws about speed limits and reckless driving. Do you see that as “centralized state planning of personal choices”? How about FDA and department of agriculture laws. Do you see those as “centralized state planning of personal health choices” too?

LL

I think that’s a little different. Laws about speed limits and reckless driving are legally valid because the public roads are owned by the Gov.

Sorry. I am having an extremely difficult time trying to finding any coherency in you responses. This is one of the best. “why not compare the number of prates to global warming” Seriously? Are you really having a hard time following the logic here. The U.S. spends TWICE as much as Canada on health care and ranks seven places below it.
I could rip the entirety of your post point by point but its getting too tiring. All I will get in return is a bunch of vague comments that dont respond to my actual points.
I think its clear we are not going to agree on this. We have dramatically different views of economics, freedom and social responsibility and since you don’t seem to be able to adhere to any sort of logical point/counterpoint I’ll cut my losses here.

Bull. Ive carefully highlighted the major holes in your facile conclusion that private medical service is inherently more costly than medicare options by pointing out how you’ve failed to address the increasing regulatory burden placed on insurance companies, that restricts small players from offering market driven choices resulting in increasing costs.

Ive also pointed out how your boast that medicare costs have risen more slowly than private insurance is irrelevant since the former is in a state of major financial crisis.

Your dismissal of its ‘incoherent and im too tired to reply’ rhetoric is plainly disingenuous.